A confusing game of one-upmanship

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Mark Latham gave us "ease the squeeze" with his tax and family policy. John Howard followed up with a $6 billion campaign launch and was forced to "defend the spend".

It was then back to Latham who responded with a new $1.6 billion child care policy and Labor's election launch tomorrow is shaping up as another billion-dollar baby.

Liberal strategists say they have in the bag options for even further spending in the remaining two weeks of the campaign, depending on what Labor does.

Confused? You are not alone. Focus group polling conducted for the Herald by ACNielsen in the Liberal-held marginal seat of Parramatta showed undecided voters in the key young families group were suffering from policy overload and did not know what was on offer by either side.

Which brings us to an even weirder thought. Could this be part of Howard's plan? Match and dispatch. You see, unlike most campaigns which are run by the Government with the Opposition reacting, this is the reverse.

Labor is running the agenda and the Coalition is reacting and trying to negate it. So Labor policies are matched - or thereabouts - and dispatched. They end up cancelling each other out.

Instead, voters focus on the leadership characteristics of Howard and Latham, which Howard hopes will favour him as the incumbent with a track record of presiding over a healthy economy.

The match and dispatch strategy started with Labor's accusation about the Coalition's lack of truth in government. Howard turned the focus on truth into a crusade about trust. As voters trust no politicians, this tactic cancelled out the potentially lethal truth weapon.

Howard then turned the trust issue into one of reliability, which favoured him as the leader with a reliable track record against Latham, who was too new to be judged reliable.

Another example is Medicare. The Health Minister, Tony Abbott, was briefed to do whatever it took to neutralise the perception by people that Labor was better able to manage health policy, especially Medicare, than the Coalition. Abbott set about shamelessly pledging money to build up Medicare, $5.5 billion since last year compared with $4.4 billion by Labor.

Howard - who once wanted to get rid of Medicare - in his campaign launch speech said with a straight face "there is one issue on which we are not divided. Both sides of politics in Australia are committed to the maintenance of Medicare". And the plan has worked so far, it would seem. The Coalition has to some extent neutralised Medicare as an issue as bulk-billing rates start to rise.

Although Labor and the Coalition have very different philosophical approaches to Medicare - the ALP wants to keep it as a universal service while the Coalition is encouraging greater private provision - to voters the distinctions are easily blurred.

What Howard has not bargained for is that voters may take the same attitude to the issue of budget responsibility. Although the Government has a reputation for cutting spending and producing a string of budget surpluses, it now runs the risk of undermining its message that Labor would damage the economy by the sheer size of its campaign promises.

Criticism of the large amount of spending and revenue foregone in the Coalition's $6 billion campaign launch came as no surprise to the Government. Howard and his advisers spent a lot of time just before the campaign launch on this issue. While the attacks were predicted, the final conclusion was they would be countered by a positive reaction to the measures and give Howard and Peter Costello something to talk about.

It was decided the Coalition needed a set of policies eye-catching enough to steal a march on Labor and build momentum after a week seen by commentators as one of Latham's best on the campaign trail.

While the policies had to appeal to a broad range, they also had to fit with the Coalition's social and economic philosophies so they did not appear as mere election handouts. Hence the anti-union, anti-regulation rhetoric and frequent references to providing people - such as mothers - with choice.

As focus group polling perpetually shows, voters are very cynical about money thrown their way at election time.

The new technical education colleges are seen as the first step in reforming trades education to improve links with business, strengthen literacy and numeracy among kids not destined for university, and liven up the TAFE system.

Even costlier policies including phasing out of old growth forests in Tasmania were considered and may yet be released.

Whether this welter of middle-class welfare promises is absorbed by voters in time for the election day is anyone's guess.